Poems from The Lord of the Rings

2nd (enlarged) edition, third printing.  Unpaginated.  Illustrated in colour throughout.  Green cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to spine.  Golden endpapers.  There are the remains of a clumsily removed bookplate on the front free endpaper else the volume is neat, clean, bright and tight throughout. In its original dust wrapper, very slightly bumped on extreme edges,  Mild scuff mark on inner front flap, not price clipped.

For many the poems and songs which appear in the Lord of Rings are an essential part of the Middle-earth experience, trying to furnish England with a mythology which Tolkien felt otherwise lacking and drawing on his own study of medieval and middle English epic poetry and saga stories, including Beowulf.  Bringing together all the poems form the work, this expanded edition demonstrates Tolkien’s skill as a poet as well as a storyteller.  Alan Lee, whose illustrations appear on nearly every page and who illustrated the dust wrapper as well, was at the time of publication the only artist to have been commissioned to illustrate both The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.  His work has become identified with Middle-earth and so defining of Tolkien’s work that he become the principle designer for the film tribology.